


Unbreakable

by Littleshebear



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Alcohol, F/M, Grief, Hurt/Comfort, Pre Relationship, Survivor Guilt, The Red War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-29 01:22:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18768313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Littleshebear/pseuds/Littleshebear
Summary: Zavala helps a rather tipsy Hawthorne work through her feelings of anger and guilt after losing her scouts to Thumos the Unbroken.





	Unbreakable

Hawthorne left the triage station in a hurry with the metallic tang of blood in her nostrils. She resisted the urge to run, there was enough fear and misery to go around without the refugees seeing her like that.

When she reached her quarters she slammed the door and stripped off her blood-stained clothes, pausing for a moment when she realised her poncho was torn at the sleeve. One of the injured had grabbed on to her and refused until he had finally passed out. She decided she'd clean it up and patch it later, she was too tired and heartsick to bother mending it tonight. She tossed it aside and headed for a tiny shower room, cordoned off by a ragged curtain. She turned on the water, the pipes shuddering and groaning in protest before a weak spray of water emerged. She gasped as the freezing water hit her skin, then forced a slow breath from her lungs, making herself adjust to the cold. The water gradually became a bearable lukewarm and she relaxed. This was comparative luxury, she had bathed in far colder during her time in the wilds.

She pressed her palms and forehead against the stall’s tiles and closed her eyes, replaying the evening’s events. How she had sat by the radio, waiting in vain for her scouting party to report in, how she had removed herself to a viewpoint above the Farm to watch for their return. How she had to swallow down panic when she saw what was left of them being brought in on sparrows, by Guardians who had obviously intercepted their cries for help, cries that had been dampened from wider broadcast by the Cabal. 

She watched the water swirl around the plughole at her feet, gradually turning from pink to clear as the last of her colleague’s blood was rinsed from her body. The tears that had been threatening since she’d seen her friends, her charges, bleed their last finally overwhelmed her. She had hoped it was safe in here, that the water could disguise her weeping but her angry, frustrated tears ran far hotter than the shower. 

After drying off and getting into some clean clothes, she scrubbed the bloodstains out of her poncho as best she could then made her way to the firepit on the edge of the farm. She spread out her poncho to dry, wrapped herself up in a blanket and set to drinking a jar of bathtub gin. The denizens of the farm all had the good sense to give her a wide berth. All but one.

She knew him was him without looking around. Dev knew to leave her alone, Cayde would have led with a well-meaning but misplaced quip and Ikora would have got straight to the point. The hovering at a distance and the polite throat clearing could only mean him.

‘What do you want, Zavala?” She asked before taking a swig of the burning liquor.

‘We have some information on the arm of the Red Legion that attacked your people. I thought you might be interested.’

Hawthorne took a deep breath and tightened the blanket around herself. ‘Go on.’

He approached slowly and spoke in a gentle tone of voice that dripped with sympathy. It made her grind her teeth. There was no need for this sort of kid gloves treatment, she wasn’t that delicate. 

‘The description your scouts gave before they…” He paused. 

‘Before they died,” Hawthorne filled in for him. 

Zavala sighed and closed the remaining gap between them. ‘May I sit?’

‘It’s a free farm,’ she grumbled. ‘I’m not stopping you.’ The alcohol was most definitely having an effect. What was left of her sobriety knew it was unfair to speak to him this way. None of this was his fault but she was angry and he was there. The increasingly intoxicated part of her justified it by saying he should have known to leave her alone. 

“The descriptions your scouts gave match reports we’ve been getting about a Red Legion general who calls himself Thumos The Unbroken.”

‘The Unbroken?’ She snorted derisively. ‘Someone’s got an ego. What do the reports say?’ 

‘He’s one of Ghaul’s Blood Guard, high ranking, ruthless.’ He paused, looking between Hawthorne and the jar of moonshine in her hand. ‘That’s the gist of the communications we intercepted.’

‘What do they say?’ Hawthorne fixed him with an icy stare.

‘I’m not sure the details are-’

‘Tell me.’ 

‘Hawthorne, please don’t take this the wrong way but how much have you had to dr-’

‘Don’t coddle me, Commander!’

Zavala sighed deeply. ‘As best Cryptarchs can translate from the transmissions we discovered? He heralds his arrival with something like this: Hail Thumos, you who are fated to fall.’ He paused before finishing his report. ‘And then there’s just screaming.’

Hawthorne nodded, chewing on the inside of her cheek, trying to ignore the lump in her throat that was making itself known again. She kept nodding, as if that would stave off any need to address the other physical reactions that what she was feeling right now. ‘I see.’ She took another quaff of her drink. If any more tears appeared she could blame them on how strong the drink was. ‘Was there anything else you needed, Commander?’

‘I just wanted to make sure you were all right.’

‘Oh yeah, i’m fine,’ she replied, her lips curling into a snarl, ‘Nearly an entire scout team is dead because of me but yeah,’ raised her glass to him in a mock toast, ‘I’m just dandy, thanks for asking.’

‘This wasn't your fault.’ He held her gaze for an uncomfortable beat.

‘I gave the order, I sent them out there,’ she grumbled, turning away to stare at the fire again. ‘Let me guess,’ she snapped, ‘You’d have done things differently? Did you come here to impart your wisdom?’

‘No,’ he replied, sounding a little taken aback. ‘No, not at all.’ She shot him a baleful look and he shrugged, ‘I…’ He hesitated, ‘In actual fact I’m impressed by you. I’ve nothing but admiration for what you’ve achieved here.’

‘People died because of me,’ she said before turning away again. ‘I don’t expect you do understand. You’re a -’

‘A guardian?’ He interjected. 

‘Don’t pretend you know what’s like, because you don’t! Dying over and over but coming back every time isn’t the’ 

‘That’s not true.’

‘Dying over and over but still coming back isn’t the same as-’

‘It’s not true.’ Zavala didn’t shout but there was something in his voice that overruled her desire to interrupt him again. ‘Are you a student of history, Hawthorne?’ He asked after a tense silence.

‘No,’ she shrugged, ‘I didn’t pay much attention at school.’

‘Look up the Great Disaster, when you have time. The Battle of Mare Imbrium.’ There was no acrimony in his voice, just regret. ‘We lost hundreds in that one sortie. I know what it’s like to lose people, I know what it’s like to lose them on my order, believe me.’ he looked on her not with anger but compassion. ‘That’s command, Hawthorne. You make judgement calls. The ones that go well, you never think about but the ones that don’t work out…’ 

‘How do you deal with it?’ She whispered.

‘Try to learn from it. That’s all you can do. You did the best you could, there’s no point in punishing yourself. It changes nothing.’ Hawthorne looked at her feet. ‘But you will, I’m guessing. I always do,’ he said after a brief pause, that normally sonorous voice of his coming out as little more than a defeated rumble. ‘That’s command for you. When you start to stop caring that’s probably when you should step down.’

Hawthorne looked up at him with bleary eyes and felt her lips twitch into a faint smile for the first time that day. “Sucks, right?”

Zavala didn’t smile in return but he nodded. “It surely does.” He gingerly rested his fingertips on her wrist and said, ‘Do me a favour and don’t drink any more? It’s not a healthy way of dealing with this.’ 

‘You’re not the boss of me,’ she protested, pulling her hand away from his, sloshing some of the liquor over herself in the process.

‘Hawthorne, please.’ 

‘Fine,’ she acquiesced but held back from giving him the glass. ‘On one condition.’ She stared him down, holding the jar between them. ‘You have a drink with me. Then I’ll stop.’

He rolled his eyes and took the glass from her. ‘One shot. And then that’s it.’ He tipped the jar up delicately, as though it were a crystal champagne flute rather than a scuffed old jam jar. ‘To absent friends.’ He took a drink and screwed his eyes shut, before swallowing hard. He coughed and spluttered. ‘Well. That’s certainly. Something.’

‘Good huh? We make it out back,’ she gestured toward the barn.

‘I’d have more but my ghost is significantly weakened. I fear if I went blind, she wouldn’t be able to heal me.’

‘Wuss,’ she sniggered. ‘Okay…’ She got to her feet, swaying a little as the full effect of the drink hit her. She got a corner of the blanket caught under her feet and staggered backward right into Zavala. 

‘Easy,’ he intoned, gently grasping her upper arms and righting her. He rucked the blanket up around her shoulders to keep it away from the ground.

‘M’poncho,’ she looked around, knowing she’d left it somewhere nearby to dry but couldn’t quite remember where. 

‘I have it,’ Zavala reassured her. She stumbled along beside him, gripping on to his arm for support.

She couldn’t remember much about their trek across the farm, she didn’t remember anything about how she got back to her room and into bed. She woke the next morning with a bone dry mouth and what she could swear was a Cabal drill pounding inside her head. She sat up, waited for the dizziness to abate and reached out for her shoes and poncho with shaking hands. Her poncho. She stared at it in confusion for a few moments. It was clean, sitting neatly folded on a table beside her bed. She picked it up to see the rip had been expertly sewn up. If she didn’t already know it had been there, she probably never would have noticed any evidence of a tear.

When she finally ventured outside, she made a beeline for the command centre in the barn. Zavala looked up from his maps and reports when he heard her approach. 

‘How are you feeling?’ He asked, glancing at the bottle of water she had clenched in her hands. She’s grateful for him keeping his voice down, anything louder than a whisper will set that Cabal mining crew in her skull off again. 

‘Been better,’ she whispered. ‘Listen,’ she glanced around to ensure they had a modicum of privacy before speaking in a stilted, staccato manner. ‘Sorry. About last night. Had no cause to talk to you like that.’ She flicked her gaze up at him then immediately away again. ‘Sorry.’

‘It’s quite all right,’ Zavala replied in that low baritone that Hawthorne’s delicate senses suddenly found soothing. ‘You’d had a bad day. Happens to the best of us.’

‘Did you,’ she hesitates, her confused and alcohol-impaired brain feeling the need to make two attempts at the question. ‘Did you mend my poncho?’ 

‘Yes, I did, I noticed it was torn,’ he answers simply. 

Hawthorne raised her eyebrows and felt laughter bubbling up. “You...embroider? You?”

Zavala didn’t smile but there was unmistakable amusement in his eyes. “Crochet is more my speed but I have a basic understanding of needlepoint.”

‘Oh. Okay.’ She scrambled through her addled memories trying to piece together what happened after they left the firepit. Since seeing him again this morning, a dim memory of him helping her take her shoes off and getting her into bed began to coalesce. She stares at him, suddenly remembering how he tucked the covers around her but more than that she remembered what he said to her before leaving her to sleep, that’s one thing she remembered so clearly. 

‘He’s Thumos the Unbroken. Not Thumos the Unbreakable. We’ll get him.’

Zavala frowned at her. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yeah!’ She replied a little too quickly. ‘Just zoned out for a second.’ She gave a brief, self deprecating laugh. ‘Hungover. I’ll be fine. See you around. Thanks for…’ She tugged the sleeve of her poncho.

‘Don’t mention it.’

‘I’ll see you later,’ she mumbled, turning away and heading for the steps that lead to Louis’ perch. She told herself that the dizzy, off-kilter sensation she felt every time she thought of his words to her was just the hangover, nothing more.


End file.
